YEAH! Our First button sales!

It's true, even with a years experience, you still never know what will happen when you start up a new shop. Or make a new product change for that matter. ( i.e. book finding vending machines to carving to sewing to product supply.....etc) But today the ice was broken by our first sale. I know..it has only been three days since the shop was first put up. And the sales are not HUGE...but they are the beginning and that is good enough for the moment. At least we now know that people are looking and our shop is set up right. By the way...have you seen the weather? Glad we are not in Michigan at the moment....lol. Ah well low batter at the laptop tells me that I need to make this post brief. Hope everyone is having a great week so far.

Cheryls Shop...finished?

Well I hope so for the moment anyway. I completed the last two tables for her tonight and had to get creative with the last one. It was made for the corner. I think they look OK by themselves, but when you marry them up to each other, the small 1/16th of an inch difference comes out. BAAA! Well at least a couple of them are close. and they are all dead level so really there shouldn't be any complaints. Cheryl for the most part, is happy and I'm actually pretty relieved to be done with them. Now I have to figure out what to do with all that mismatched furniture she had before ( because, of coarse! they are now all in my area) Also I feel pretty confident to take on my own table in the near future. Tomorrow is another Grand Rapids trip with, hopefully, some band saw work to be done! I'll try to capture some pics!

The BIG MOVE! Fin!

So tonight we both finished up with out shops. I think it took me longer to get all my stuff set up, I would guess I had more "stuff" than Cheryl. Anyway I think it turned out pretty good. The cats approve! I will probably do some minor adjusting with the wiring and light placement later, but for now, at least all of the stuff is not all cluttered up. I'm happy that I managed to find a place to put stuff when I took my dust table apart. It held a lot of cluttered crap. There are a couple of shows this weekend where Cheryl and I are thinking about attending. We need a little seed money to help her fill out some orders she has lined up for her Wristlets. My new shop allows me to gaze upon some of my previous work. YEAH! For tonight's anime. We'll continue with School Rumble. Cheryl and I just finished season one. She now wants to move on to season two. Enjoy the closing theme of Season one!

The BIG MOVE! Part 2

OK so I started moving stuff out of my shop and cleaning things up a bit. I have to get out so Cheryl can get in. SO....Here are the pics of my dust bomb! Yes the walls are suppose to be kinda off white. Not really the brown that the dust makes them. We had a little challenge moving out my special custom made dust table. It would not fit out the door. SO... Plan B You probably guessed what plan B was. What do you do with the table after Plan B is implemented? That's right! TO THE FIRE! So now Cheryl is in charge of fixing the Swiss cheese walls and touch up painting. It is turning out pretty good at the moment. Cheryl currently is moving small bits of furniture in there so that she can work with the arrangement. Once her stuff is out of the garage, Mine will move into the open space. We'll think of the next step after that. For your Anime pleasure: School Rumble! It is a very funny show! I feel for Harima and think he shodul end up with Eri, the rich girl who hates his guts but is strangly attracted to him. Tenma on the otherhand is just clueless, and unatainable. But that is what he wants. Here's the openning. Enjoy!

The BIG MOVE! "Before" Pics!

Well, this week will be the beginning of a few changes around here. Namely we are retooling our business to match up with the changing times. And to start things off, we will be closing up my old shop and moving my stuff into the garage while we fix the place up for Cheryl's shop. I should say "Cheryl and Ethan's shop" since I will most likely be drafted for unknown manual labor. But bottom line is that the shop seen in the pictures before you, will be changed, so I'm posting the "before" pictures of the progress. I feel pretty good about it surprisingly, since for the past three years I've been doing all of my magic in this tiny little room. We'll see as the week goes by! Oh! And you should have seen it before I got it. Blue shag carpet is not the best for carving! I think Cheryl will find a really good use for the wood floor. Please note: This is a 12' X 12' room. Don't be fooled into believing it is this huge shop! If you remember me carving the bed, you will remember the challenge it was moving that monstrosity around this little room. So I may have to start a new blog to

begin the cataloging of the new shop and how it goes. For the Anime sellection, we have been watching Rah Xephon. A great anime about tuning the world with sound. Enjoy!

Some new seats

Tonight I carved up two seats. It will take a little creative assembly to fix it up, but we are seeing if they will have potential. Yesterday I was busy cleaning up my room and setting up a new peg board. Not much has changed except that I cleaned the stain and poly off the windows and floor! It probably won't last long though. We are trying yet another scheme to see if we can branch out.

The Job of the Shop Cat

So this weekend we put up the Christmas tree so Cheryl could show off her Christmas tree skirts. She sold one right away so I guess it worked, even without the lights on it.
So I have been busy working on seats this weekend. 11 seats. And My shop cat, Red, has been helping me. Now some of you might be asking...What does a shop cat do? Shop cats are essential parts of the

business. Cats inspect things and make sure things are made properly. Like boxes. Material quality.
Neck warmer. and
Chair warmer.



And he tells you when its break time. He even helps out with Cheryl's shop

This one passes!
As I write this, He is on my lap

causing me great hardship in typing. Cheryl doesn't need much help since she has her own Shop cat.

Cheryl's store!

I took a break from carving today and decided to work on a few odds and ends that have been vexxing me for a while. Anyway, I decided to show off a few things from Cheryl's shop since she had a "breakthrough" last night. She made a cute little plushy that she has fallen in love with and hopes others also will for Christmas. I had to help her put the eyes on them. She has also been working on wine carriers, stockings, and book bags. The wrist lets and book bags have been selling well lately.
So Cheryl is busy sewing tonight and I am hanging out with my shop cat on my lap, causing me to type slowly. Speaking of cats, I taught the kitten how to roll over on command now. next is the shake and then possibly the mercat sit. Usually, the cats rarely get past the rollover and shake commands. They refuse to learn another one, they just repeat the ones they know over and over again. Now Zulu, the late cat ( cat on my avatar) used to speak, rollover, shake, and open the door on command ( open the door, he would tap the door knob of the closest door till you opened it or he could pull it open.) I'll have to capture a video of him rolling over sometime in the future.